What do we really know about the all-knowing doctors we're programmed to worship?
They were likely abused in med school, for one thing
Prologue: Since an article like this can easily get derailed, I’ll do my best to preempt that possibility. I’m not saying every doctor is bad and no medicine or modality can be good. But we live in a culture in which the Medical-Industrial Complex operates with virtual impunity and must be exposed.
As I recently wrote, we’re heavily conditioned to accept the white coats as infallible, selfless heroes. It is always in our best interests to challenge such groupthink.
A research paper published in March 2020 found:
“Hierarchy, and a culture of self-sacrifice, resilience, and deference, were identified as problematic elements of the medical profession. In the minds of participants, these factors created barriers to reporting mistreatment, as participants felt reporting led to being labeled a ‘troublemaker,’ affecting career progression. Additionally, participants stated that avenues of recourse were unclear and did not guarantee confidentiality or desired outcomes. Mistreatment is continuing in clinical teaching and has negative consequences on medical students’ mental health and learning. Structural change is needed to combat institutionalized mistreatment to ensure the wellbeing of future doctors and high-quality patient care.”
A more recent study (May 2022) of more than 20,000 medical students exposed “instances of mistreatment and discrimination by faculty, staff, and other students, including being publicly humiliated, physically harmed or threatened, or denied opportunities; receiving lower grades or evaluations; or experiencing offensive remarks.”
Often, this treatment was based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
Mother Jones magazine reported: “Men and women becoming doctors experience eight to ten years of relative social isolation, receiving almost no feedback from the non-medical world.”
New England Journal of Medicine: “Too often our top leaders in academic medicine, the deans and the department chairs, manage through fear and intimidation.”
Research finds that at least 80 percent of medical students report being abused in med school. Fifteen percent said the abusive experience would always affect them. According to Dr. Samar Cabbage:
Approximately 300–400 physicians commit suicide annually. Given that a typical doctor has about 2,300 patients under his or her care, that means more than a million Americans will lose a physician to suicide this year.
In a study of six medical schools, almost 7 percent of students said they had thought of ending their lives in the last two weeks.
In another recent study, 29 percent of residents suffered from significant symptoms of depression. And those symptoms escalated within a year of starting training.
These are the men and women we are programmed to obediently trust with our well-being — and our very lives.
Reminder #1: Even if they were treated ideally during med school, doctors are still working in an increasingly digitized, inhuman system that punishes anyone who strays from the algorithmic rules. “Well-being” will never be the goal of a profit-driven structure.
Reminder #2: Even if they were treated ideally during med school, doctors are still getting a woefully insufficient education. One example is the frightening reality that students spend fewer than 20 hours learning about nutrition during their four-year medical school careers.
Reminder #3:
Doctors who have survived this process report that, at its nastiest, it's indistinguishable from cult or gang hazing. The trend over the last twenty years adds a radical proletarianization: they're unlikely to ever have their own practice. They'll be locked into corporate human resource pools for the entirety of their careers. Those with loans to pay off will *always* be under terrible pressure. The corporate human resource pools are increasingly owned by "private equity", i.e. asset-stripping. micro-managing, sociopathic goons.
The sick "heal" the sick, just as the blind lead the blind.